Multi-writer consistency conditions for shared memory objects

Abstract

Regularity is a shared memory consistency condition that has received considerable attention, notably in connection with quorum-based shared memory. Lamport's original definition of regularity assumed a single-writer model, however, and is not well defined when each shared variable may have multiple writers. In this thesis, we address this need by formally extending the notion of regularity to a multi-writer model. We have shown that the extension is not trivial. While there exist various ways to extend the single-writer definition, the resulting definitions will have different strengths. Specifically, we give several possible definitions of regularity in the presence of multiple writers. We then present a quorum-based algorithm to implement each of the proposed definitions and prove them correct. We study the relationships between these definitions and a number of other well-known consistency conditions, and give a partial order describing the relative strengths of these consistency conditions. Finally, we provide a practical context for our results by studying the correctness of two well-known algorithms for mutual exclusion under each of our proposed consistency conditions.